I've always been a small person with a huge appetite. I won't lie -- I've sometimes played it up for laughs, I've sometimes gone further than I should out of a macho impulse. But while I might occasionally give it an extra push, it's not faked. And while it's a great ice breaker, a fun thing to be known for, and actually makes all-you-can-eat buffets good value meals for me, it's not always easy. I'll be the last to complain about having a high metabolism, but when you're hungry all the time? It's not cheap. All that food don't come for free.
And you know the word "hangry" -- hungry + angry, anger stemming from hunger? It's not a joke. What other people usual describe as the monster that is born from their not having had their morning coffee is what takes me over as my hunger grows, like a full moon rising to pull forth a rabid werewolf. And what that means is that I have to plan a lot of my life around food, the ease of which varies widely depending on where I'm working, when I'm working, etc.. It's also interesting being in a field where it's common for people to, at least during certain phases of a production, work rather than do things like eat, sleep, or shower, just in order to get the work done. I'm at the point in my life, however, when I don't apologize for needing to eat. I know what I need to function as a professional and just as a human being -- trust me, you won't like me when I'm hungry -- and I don't feel a need to apologize for that.
Anyhow, that's all to say... Here's another restaurant round-up! New York City this time, from places I've eaten within the past few months. Again, these aren't so much reviews as recollections and recommendations.
La Piñata (Inwood: 2930 Broadway, by 207th Street)
Despite all of my posting about food, I rarely eat out. But if I'm at home and wanting something satisfying and relatively sheap, I've found myself turning to La Piñata. A casual little Mexican joint, I've gotten take-out [GrubHub] from them a couple times and eaten at the restaurant once. Their physical restaurant is small and clean -- and when I met a friend there once for lunch, it was entirely empty except for us. Our own private restaurant! It's a good value place -- we both got the lunch special chicken burrito that time, and it was very flavorful, despite it being super cheap and chicken always carrying the risk of being bland. When I've gotten the dinner burrito as delivery, it has been enough for me to be entirely stuffed after eating it (and as I mentioned, I have a sizeable appetite). Overall, a cheap, reliable place if you're looking for some eats up in Inwood.
Empire Biscuit (Alphabet City: 198 Avenue A, near 12th Street)
If you're closer to the southern end of the island and care nothing for your health, Empire Biscuits is worth your time. It's a 24-hour southern biscuit joint. No, really, that's all it is. Nothing but biscuits. I had heard some scuttlebutt on the place, so I mentioned it to some friends and we ended up hitting it up before we went to see the Welcome to Night Vale live show back in December. We were eating there as dinner, though its 24-hour status and the nature of its wares probably make it a popular munchie spot. I was pretty hungry and ended up downing four; my more moderate friends at three each. Their menu offers a variety of pre-fab combos, as well as make-your-own options, where you can choose your own butter/topping combo, some savory and some sweet. I had the Scotch Egg sandwich, the Sausage gravy sandwich, and two of the Bright Crew combos (brown sugar oxtail and arugula & fennel butter). All were delicious, but it was the Bright Crew was one I would keep coming back to. Don't be misled by the presence of sausage in the gravy sandwich - it's very much a biscuit with gravy that happens to have sausage in it, rather than a sausage sandwich. And the scotch egg was good, but it wasn't as mindblowing as I'd hoped it would be. I would very much like to come back here to try more of their options. And also to have another Bright Crew biscuit.
Wok to Walk (Midtown: 570 8th Avenue, near 38th Street)
If you're in midtown and are looking for something relatively cheap and easy, this is a very convenient take-out place. It's a build-your-own combo place, where you choose a base rice/noodle, your add-ins, your sauce, your toppings. The low price that they list is a little misleading -- that's the base price, and then most things are additional. It's all fresh-cooked to order, though, and very fast, to say nothing of being right in midtown, so it's a great quick option if you find yourself in the area and needing something relatively cheap but still good.
Bonchon (Midtown: 207 W. 38th Street, near 38th Street)
Have you ever had Korean fried chicken? If you haven't and you like fried chicken or life in general, then you owe it to yourself to give it a try. It's double-friend, making the breading be of a thinner, crisper nature, somewhere between traditional American fried chicken and tempura. And then there's a sauce. I'm a fan of Bonchon's soy garlic, which is an entrancing blend of salty and sweet. The spicy option is just that -- spicy. Definitely delicious and not enough to destroy your tastebuds, but I've found it to be a heat that builds. We were once accidentally brought a half-and-half platter rather than just soy garlic, and at first I tried to stick it out, just to try something different, but while I thought I could take it at first, I was proved wrong about three pieces in. Anyhow, specifically to Bonchon and not just extolling the existence of fried chicken, Bonchon is one of my favorite places to eat out and my go-to when getting together with a group of friends. I still mourn the demise up the Uptown East Bonchon, which was one of my favorite restaurants -- a cute little joint with a shiny, just slightly slick ambiance that was classy casual, with good food and strong drinks for good prices. But while that was one of my favorite places to gather with a couple of friends for a filling but civilized meal, the Midtown location is wonderful for larger or slightly more rambunctious groups. If you like your booze, get the black fishbowl -- at least when we did, they mixed it strong and it was definitely good alcohol ratio to price. What the Midtown local also boasts is a decent selection of other appetizers and sides. (In contast, the location in Koreatown has a menu that is more limited, and their more generic offerings (e.g., french fries) aren't anything special.) You can get a table full of fried chicken as well as japchae and okonomiyaki and tteokbokki. And even better than that -- I've often gone out with groups of friends here and we've stuffed ourselves to the gills and, if we don't order alcohol, our bill tends to come out to a little less than $20 per person. That is for a lot of food that, while not fine dining, is pretty darn good. Hard to beat -- especially right in Midtown!
I realized as I was compiling this round-up that I've been doing a sampling of ramen places lately. Shortly thereafter, the NYT published an article on NYC ramen places. I haven't hit most of the places on that list, but now it's my aim to. (I've also eaten at Totto Ramen, but it was a while ago, so I didn't include it below.) Because ramen? Is awesome. If you've only ever had ramen from a styrofoam cup, I encourage you to try a real ramen restaurant at some point -- it's like getting real spaghetti and meatballs from a nice Italiam restaurant when you've only ever had Chef Boyardee out of a can.
Tabata Ramen 2 (Midtown: 557 8th Avenue, near 38th Street)
Another super-convenient place, locationally. The place is a hole-in-the-wall, easy to miss from the outside and not much space on the inside. But duck in and you can get yourself a giant bowl of soup for under $12. It's not the best ramen I've ever had -- the ingredients aren't particularly stand-out, it's not the most flavorful -- but it's a cheap oasis of satisfaction that has fortified me on some chilly NYC nights.
Jinya Ramen (West Village: 24 Greenwich Avenue, near W. 10th Street)
A friend and I went here with a Gilt City deal for one tapa, three skewers, two ramens, two desserts, and a bottle of house sake. It was a great deal, and we were glad to have gone, but we came to the same conclusion: the ramen was, by far, the weakest part of the entire meal. It was a cold and rainy night, so it was satisfying in the way that a giant bowl of steaming hot noodle soup inevitable is, but the noodles were nothing special, the broth was more salty than flavorful, the other elements were forgettable. The other items, though? They were all great. And the upscale hipster ambiance -- lots of lean Japanese young men in skinny jeans and plaid shirts as servers -- was kind of hilarious, but it really did seem like a great place to go for a drink and some appetizers. Especially the brussels sprouts tempura. Those brussels sprouts were fucking addictive.
Ippudo NY (East Village: 65 Fourth Avenue, near E. 10th Street)
Ippudo, in contrast, was all about the contents of that bowl. It was beautiful. Huge, hot, and each element excellent. I had the Akamaru Modern, but the specification seems unnecessary as everyone at the table loved what they got. A sightly more expensive option, but there is a sizable step up in quality. There's really not much more I can say to this other than that it was delicious. Even coming in right before they closed for lunch (probably sometime after 3:00pm), an off-time for meals, we still had to wait, so I recommend having that time built in.
My Ippudo experience was a result of working in NoHo for a number of weeks. (It was tech and I'd brought my dinner, as usual, but then one of the cast members said, hey guys why don't we go to Ippudo? And ) During that time, I also discovered a few other places, sheer proximity and frequency (and also the enabling of others) wearing at my usually more abstemious restaurant habits.
Clinton Street Baking Company & Restaurant (Lower East Side: 4 Clinton Street, between East Houston and Stanton)
I hadn't been planning to go to Clinton Street Baking Co. -- hadn't even heard of it -- but then my recently developed social media/foodie nose picked up the news that February was Pancake Month at CSB and they were having pancake specials, including a dark chocolate and raspberry special on Valentine's Day. So I decided that I would treat myself for Valentine's Day and have a late lunch there before walking to work. As a heads-up, even showing up at 2:30pm on a Friday as a single diner, I had about a 25-minute wait. The place is small and popular. Even if you think you're at an off-time, include some wait time in your schedule. (I don't even want to think of what sort of ordeal going for brunch must be.) It was well worth the wait, though:
That's those pancakes with dark chocolate chunks and raspberry-caramel sauce that I mentioned before, along with a side of sugar-cured bacon. I had worried a little that the pancakes would be super sweet, but they weren't -- very classic, delicious pancakes, with smooth, subtly sweet dark chocolate and fresh, tangy raspberry balancing each other out. And the bacon was also delicious. Now that I think about it, it seems a little odd to "review" a place based on a special dish served on one day of the year, but it was so delicious that it definitely made me want to be a return diner.
Lafeyette (NoHo: 380 Lafayette Street, near Great Jones/3rd Street)
My first encounter with Lafayette was actually back this past fall, when the director brought in a pastry from there for my birthday. It was kind of awkward: he didn't bring any silverware, so there was no way to share it and I ended up taking home this entire cake-sized pastry for myself. But then I ate it all, so. Anyhow, it was delicious, and if that is par for the course for the coffee/pastry shop in the front of the restaurant, then one could easily eat just from there forever. A friend and I also got dinner from here one evening, and it was actually pretty good value for being a moderately upscale French restaurant. I don't have much experience with French cuisine at all, but it all tasted good to me and it didn't actually break the bank. And the table bread was to die for.
Great Jones Café (NoHo: 54 Great Jones Street, near the Bowery)
An unassuming little place on Great Jones, easy to overlook, is actually a Cajun restaurant that has been there for longer than I've been alive. For the area, it's pretty damn cheap, with filling entrees in the $15-$20 range. Brunch is delicious and of good value, too. An extremely smll space, it feels cozy but lively. And dear lord, get the corn bread. Get the corn bread.
Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria (NoHo: 53 Great Jones Street, near the Bowery)
Not cheap by a long shot, but a huge recommendation if you have some dough to drop on deliciousness. The director for our show got the whole lot of us hooked -- he would sometimes pick up baked goods there before rehearsal, given that it was only about two doors down from our rehearsal space. The bread. The prosciutto rolls. The bombolini. The prosciutto rolls. They were all absolutely to die for. And then, the night that my friend and I got dinner at Lafayette, we came here afterward for drinks and dessert. Unsurprisingly, drinks and dessert were just as delicious as the wonders that I'd consumed from their bakery. The menus are not extensive, but everything on them is guaranteed to be amazing. My friend and I shared the panna cotta and migliaccio (a semolina cake with ricotta and citrus), both of which were delectable and satisfying day-closers without being overly sweet. My friend had a glass of white wine based on the server's recommendation that she liked very much, and I had the Mela e Miele cocktail (Buffalo Trace bourbon, Averna, spiced cider, raw honey, and ginger beer). I'd been nervous that it would be too sweet, but I do love my brown liquors -- and, as with the desserts, it was full of flavor and not cloying in the least. Even my friend, who doesn't like bourbon, liked it. Indeed, while far from weak, it was unbelievably smooth. And then when my mother came to see my show, we jointly celebrated my arrival day and my Off-Broadway debut with lunch here -- a pretty penny (lunch for two with shared appetizer and dessert was around $100), but oh what a delicious pretty penny. We had the table bread, cannolici ceviche (local razor clams), tagliatelle, and salt-baked whole branzino, with the lemon curd for dessert. Really, any way that I describe it will only be an elaboration on the fact that it was delicious.
Also, when I say that my soul is crying to New York City right now, what I actually mean is that it's crying for prosciutto rolls.
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